Along with veggies, does anyone also have a dish of pellet food for their pancake tortoise? I use Pep-co Tortoise food as a side dish for my Russian and Hinged-back tortoises, does anyone use it for their pancake tortoises?
My pancakes won't even Mazuri! Mine are picky - they love fresh greens, but will begrudgingly eat some weeds and rose/grape/mulberry and hibiscus leaves.
I've put Mazuri mush in on top of the weeds for mine. I've never seen any on their faces, but it does go away…maybe just mashed into the substrate though.
We have a pancake (about 16 months) and a marginated hatchling, and we feed them the same things but no veggies at all. The majority of foods that we give them are home-grown weeds using this mix: http://www.tortoisesupply.com/TestudoMix , and we grow wheat grass and petunias, and give them other home grown things from time to time. We also feed them store-bought dandelion greens, arugula, and kale/collard greens during the week, but this might make up 1/3 or less of each meal offered.
We have had great results with the ZooMed grassland tortoise pellets. We use some in every meal- first moistened, then crumbled and mixed in with their meal. Anyways, hope this helps.
I use the ZooMed for grassland species well moistened and mixed in with grocery greens, fresh cut or dry-moistened grass, hibiscus, mulberry, nasturtium, cucumber vine, and sedum. I also use Layena Sunfresh layer crumbles.
On a dry weight basis the ZooMed and Layena SunFresh is about 25% of the diet. I moisten both of these with pure Aloe juice, a native plant food for pancakes.
I have used grassland and mazuri-they prefer grassland thus far but still prefer their greens to the other foods.
I think its useful though if they eat a little of the commercial food in case you need to up their weights and its good to have on hand.
Favourite food is shaved cacti pads